In a multi-party conference call in meshed mode all the participants send their media to each other directly. If this meshed call is escalated to a bridged mode, due to legacy endpoints joining the conference or exceeding the maximum number of participants in meshed mode, then all the participants in the existing conference call are forced to join the conference call on an Audio/Video Bridge such as a multipoint control unit (MCU). This transition from a meshed call to a bridged call creates a disruption in the active conference. This escalation or transition sometimes takes a significant amount of time, producing a blackout period in the conference call. Thus, users may experience discontinuity in the video and audio streams of their conference call when escalation happens.
Since network and device capabilities are changing rapidly, the criteria to decide when to convert a mesh call to a bridge call can be very dynamic. Currently the criteria are mainly the number of participants. With the increase in the network bandwidth, and the use of mobile endpoints and standards like WEBRTC (“Web Real-Time Communication”) there are other factors that can affect the user experience in a meshed-based conference call. This can create very bad experiences for users if their device is not capable of supporting the number of streams needed for the conference or the network conditions are not good.